Why did the future as imagined from the 1950s and 1960s never come to reality?

[Thorgalaeg]

I wouldnt care about how "usable" or well done such copy would be, but if it would continue being "me" from my own point of view, i couldnt care less about the point of view of the others or the copy himself, he can have all my memories and personality but not be me, i, my continuous brain proccess which i call "me" and is now writing this post, my own conscience, my soul if anybody wants. It might have been destroyed and nobody would ever know if celebrate a funeral or not!

...but we could make us another question of course. Was I the same "me" as yesterday today when i woke up in the morning?

 

[Cutlass]

Aside from any discussion of soul - how much of your brain information would be retained in the copy? That's a more answerable and somewhat more vital question than any philosophical debate about souls.

If getting warped like that came with your very own amnesia spell, it would not be a useful technology.

A transporter like Star Trek assumes that it does a complete map of every atom in the body, and then converts each atom to energy, then turns each back into atoms, and then reassembles exactly as it was before. Now, considering how complex the brain is, and that it is both matter, and energy in motion at any given point in time, then just how in the hell do you map and reassemble that in real time? Any slightest imperfection would change memories or function.

 

[Traitorfish]

In fairness, if that were true, Kirk's behaviour would make a lot more sense. He's not just rash and aggressive, he's becoming gradually and seriously deranged as a result of cumulative transcription errors.

 

[Cutlass]

In fairness, if that were true, Kirk's behaviour would make a lot more sense. He's not just rash and aggressive, he's becoming gradually and seriously deranged as a result of cumulative transcription errors.

The same didn't happen to Picard

 

[Traitorfish]

Presumably they'd ironed out the bugs by that point.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Or Picard was truly a force to behold in his youth. A veritable demi-god of diplomacy. Or maybe that's what happened to his hair.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Or, in the end, Earl Grey does grant immortality. If used alongside teleporters.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Or Picard was truly a force to behold in his youth. A veritable demi-god of diplomacy. Or maybe that's what happened to his hair.

No, if you watch Season one, you realize just the opposite.

Picard didn't degrade in the transporter, he kept getting altered for the better.

 

[Phrossack]

Well, isn't there large deposits of Helium-3, which supposedly would be the miracle cure to all our energy problems?

I know nothing about He-3 beyond the fact that it's a fuel in Mass Effect, but its presence and usefulness would make the Moon a good place to mine, not to live on. And I figure mining will be almost totally automated by the end of this century.

 

[Plotinus]

China Miéville's Kraken features exactly this idea: that every time Kirk and co use the transporter, they're being killed and replaced by exact clones, and this has worrying consequences, especially if ghosts exist.

If the transporter works by creating a copy, then that is indeed what would be happening, no matter how exact the copy. The copy would think it's you, but it's not, because it has no substantial continuity with you. (Unlike when you go to sleep and wake up: there is arguably a psychological gap with sleeping, but not a substantial one.)

However, Star Trek transporters don't work like this, as Cutlass says - it actually transports you by turning you into a different form and then moving that form. There's an episode with Barclay that shows him, from his point of view, being attacked by something whilst being transported. So people are actually conscious and able to act even while the transport is going on: they still exist during that time, and are not destroyed and replicated at a distant location.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I wouldnt use Star Trek transporter either. If it needs to transform your body into something else to move it, the continuity of your mind could be broken at some point along the transformation proccess and since the copies are perfect, nobody, even Spock, would know it ever. However they would be dying in every chapter, like Kenny.

 

[Domen]

I am kind of disappointed. I was looking at this guys old blog about "the future" and it seems like most people there had a very optimistic perspective about what the 21st century was going to be like: Hover cars, lunar bases, underwater cities, virtual reality, holograms, food pills, Robots, Interplanetary Travel, and so on by the year 2000. Why did that vision of the future never happen? It seems the only science fiction technology that we have are computers and the internet and online games. Why did that future never come to be?

Food pills are reality - check Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Health_and_aging

 

[Louis XXIV]

Maybe but in general terms we are way backwards compared to expectations. I would change ipods by flying cars, cities in the moon and atomic toaster any day of the week.

Would you give up the internet for flying cars? What about smart phone cell phones for cities on the moon? What the hell is an atomic toaster anyway and why do I want it?

The Moon is barren, lifeless, airless, cold, and with excessively low gravity. People would only want to live there because of the novelty value- it seems cool because it's on another solar body and nobody has done it before. Once living off of Earth becomes more common, it will lose that novelty and become less attractive.

I'd argue we have the capacity to live on the moon if we wanted to. We just don't do it because it would be ridiculously expensive and pointless.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Would you give up the internet for flying cars?What about smart phone cell phones for cities on the moon?

Yes and yes. And i have not a smart cell phone anyway, but a silly cell phone. It is still useful to call people though.

What the hell is an atomic toaster anyway and why do I want it?

You dont need to plug it to the wall and does not need to recharge!

 

[Louis XXIV]

You'd really give up the internet for a flying car? You realize you're making that declaration while writing on the internet, right?

By smart phone cell phone, I mean all components. Give up all cell phones, not just smart phones (I just wanted to make it clear the range of current technology as well) in exchange for the ability to live on the moon.

What's exactly the big deal about plugging in the toaster? Given the choice of plugging it in or using something radioactive as a power source, I'd rather plug it in. You can always unplug it when not in use.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I would also give up internet for having 1 millions of euros a sail yacht and being sailing around the caribbean, and also declared that while writting on the internet.

And having atomic toasters would mean we finally dominate atomic power (be it fission or fussion) to the point of having small atomic batteries at home as safe, common and cheap as our current chemical batteries, as people at sixties imagined it would be. I would chnage any miserable PC or cell phone for such technology any day of the week.

 

[Phrossack]

China Miéville's Kraken features exactly this idea: that every time Kirk and co use the transporter, they're being killed and replaced by exact clones, and this has worrying consequences, especially if ghosts exist.

If the transporter works by creating a copy, then that is indeed what would be happening, no matter how exact the copy. The copy would think it's you, but it's not, because it has no substantial continuity with you. (Unlike when you go to sleep and wake up: there is arguably a psychological gap with sleeping, but not a substantial one.)

However, Star Trek transporters don't work like this, as Cutlass says - it actually transports you by turning you into a different form and then moving that form. There's an episode with Barclay that shows him, from his point of view, being attacked by something whilst being transported. So people are actually conscious and able to act even while the transport is going on: they still exist during that time, and are not destroyed and replicated at a distant location.

This is one of my main beefs with the concept of "uploading" the mind onto a computer or AI program-- it would create a digital copy of you, but it is not you.

However, I once read a webcomic in which teleportation was invented. A man protested it, arguing that it kills you and creates a copy, because of the discontinuity of the consciousness. But then he realized that sleep did the same. I don't agree with that view, but it did give me pause.

 

[North King]

Well, generally, if you're talking about brain uploading, the theory is that you would gradually replace pieces of the brain or allow the mind to "migrate" over so that it is a more or less continuous process of transition from gray matter to electronics. This removes the continuity problem, though there's a minor Ship of Theseus problem still there.

 

[Cutlass]

This is one of my main beefs with the concept of "uploading" the mind onto a computer or AI program-- it would create a digital copy of you, but it is not you.

However, I once read a webcomic in which teleportation was invented. A man protested it, arguing that it kills you and creates a copy, because of the discontinuity of the consciousness. But then he realized that sleep did the same. I don't agree with that view, but it did give me pause.

There was an episode, IIRC it was the reboot of The Twilight Zone, where they transported a person, which was a copy, but the tech then destroyed the original body. Except a mistake was made, and they didn't know if the transport worked, so they didn't destroy the original, and then had 2.

 

[Plotinus]

This is one of my main beefs with the concept of "uploading" the mind onto a computer or AI program-- it would create a digital copy of you, but it is not you.

However, I once read a webcomic in which teleportation was invented. A man protested it, arguing that it kills you and creates a copy, because of the discontinuity of the consciousness. But then he realized that sleep did the same. I don't agree with that view, but it did give me pause.

You're referring to this. It's not a very good argument, really, because there are obvious differences between sleep and that kind of "teleportation", primarily the fact that even though sleep interrupts consciousness there's substantial continuity. It's the same body that goes to sleep and later wakes up. With "teleportation" that's not the case. Since on a very plausible understanding of human nature we are either identical with or constituted by our bodies, that's a pretty significant difference.

Well, generally, if you're talking about brain uploading, the theory is that you would gradually replace pieces of the brain or allow the mind to "migrate" over so that it is a more or less continuous process of transition from gray matter to electronics. This removes the continuity problem, though there's a minor Ship of Theseus problem still there.

It's not like that in Iain M. Banks' Culture series, where uploading is something that happens instantaneously just you before you die, thanks to a neural implant.